Welcome back to Mooniversity, our monthly column for everything “Sailor Moon.” Having finished our look back at every season of the anime and film from the 1990s, we’re going to talk about the original English dub of the series, produced by DIC Entertainment, and then Cloverway, from 1995 to 2000. But first, let’s talk about the live-action/animated 1994 pilot, which was nicknamed Saban Moon, although it was actually produced by Renaissance-Atlantic Entertainment (which co-produced Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, hence the confusion), and Toon Makers:
It’s really easy to see why Toei Animation (and perhaps Naoko Takeuchi herself) passed on this: with all due respect to YouTuber Ray Mona, who did an amazing job of unearthing the pilot last year, it is terrible, an ill-conceived pitch that lacks the conviction of being a live-action or animated reboot. First, the good part: it is really cool seeing a more diverse take on the Sailor Guardians, with the Black Jupiter, Latina Venus, and wheelchair-using Mercury, who is, rather uniquely, the party girl of the group. It’s exactly what you should do if you were to reimagine the property for a new audience (as I said extensively here), and it’s great an official take does have this.
It also demonstrates the pitfalls of removing the show from its Japanese context: the girls attend a boarding school, which is why they still have school uniforms, but their animated outfits still resemble seifuku. The girls are called Princess Warriors here, but still go by Sailor Moon et al., so it goes about justifying that by giving them rocket-propelled sailboards. Similarly, the decision to ditch the source material’s reincarnation backstory, while not necessarily bad (albeit a choice that still fundamentally changes these characters), feels partly motivated by fear of offending theologically conservative parents.
Although it wasn’t picked up, at least one idea from the pitch was used by DIC, which was to rename Mamoru Chiba Darien (a play on his original name, Endymion.) As shown in Ray Mona’s full documentary on the pilot, DIC also considered reusing the names Toon Makers apparently gave the Sailor Guardians, which were Victoria (Usagi), Dana (Rei), Sarah (Makoto), Carrie (Minako), and er, Blue (Ami). That thankfully didn’t happen, with Ami, Rei and Minako’s names only getting slightly anglicized as Amy, Raye and Mina, while Makoto was renamed Lita, which is a unique name, even if it is an unsubtle play on her lightning powers. The new name for Usagi herself, Serena, is an admittedly lovely spin on both Serenity and its basis, the goddess Selene.
There are many similar merits to the original dub, like the decision to have the late Chris Wiggins narrate a (admittedly spoilery) prologue to give the target audience some expectations, and Bob Summers’s score, while far more conventional than Takanori Arisawa’s original music, helped children like myself take the weekly proceedings as seriously as a DC, Marvel, or “Dragon Ball” episode. The pop songs created for the dub, while not as timeless as the Japanese OST, still possess their own nostalgic charm: to wit, Cristina Vee, Sailor Mars’s current English dub actress, recorded a cover of “Carry On,” the song that replaced “Moonlight Densetsu” in the first season finale. For many, the first thing they still think of when they hear the words “Sailor Moon” are the lyrics (written by Andy Heyward, the former chairman and CEO of DIC himself) from the English theme song:
Fighting evil by moonlight
Winning love by daylight
Never running from a real fight
She is the one named Sailor Moon
A major issue with the dub was the inconsistent casting: Tracey Moore voiced Usagi/Serena for several episodes of the first season, before being replaced by Terri Hawkes, who was generally solid. When Cloverway dubbed the third and fourth seasons, they recast the role with Linda Ballantyne, who sounded too old and wobbly for the part. Perhaps Ballantyne would’ve fared better though, if Cloverway’s dub hadn’t felt so rushed, a clear result of both seasons being dubbed in 2000. Sailor Uranus especially got the worst of it, with actress Sarah Lafleur somehow sounding simultaneously monotone and hyperactive thanks to the amount of dialogue she had to record.
Continued belowSpeaking of Uranus, we can’t forget the whole dub was an exercise in LGBTQ+ erasure, infamously making her and Neptune “cousins,” as well as Zoisite and Fish Eye women. I’m not opposed to having even more cool female characters, and the late Kristen Bishopic was certainly excellent as Zoisite, but these decisions were still prompted by the pervading homophobia of the time. While it remains widely debated as to why Sailor Stars wasn’t dubbed at the time, it’s just as well we were spared what might’ve been a horrible attempt to whitewash the Starlights’ genderbending. (Incidentally, the Italian dub of the series “explained” the male and female versions of the group were twins.)
So let’s say if Viz were legally able to rerelease the ’90s dubs, would it be worthwhile? I’m all for media being widely available and not out-of-print, especially when Disney and Warner Bros. are removing their own media from their streaming services, but after the completion of Viz’s full, faithful, and uncensored dub, it doesn’t seem very financially viable; it’s a historical curio, a reminder that there used to be no queer characters on American kids’ TV at all, that would only recoup the cost of restoring it if it were released in a limited edition box set.
Part of me would love a copy of this version, since it is more kid-friendly than the original & Viz dub (which is very much a story about 14-16 year olds), but let’s face it: we have grown beyond a version of Sailor Moon by people who were forced to make every character straight and cisgender, and to avoid names like Usagi and Mamoru (as well as Japanese songs) for sounding too “foreign” in a show set in Tokyo. Even if a kid is watching the characters speak in English, they would still get a far more authentic take from the Viz dub than this, and that is certainly a very beautiful thing indeed.
See you all next time, for when we continue our trip through the wilderness years with a glance at the live-action series, and the musicals.
